A slice of Chennai life

MANILA, Philippines - On the feast day of Ganesh, Hindu god of good fortune, prosperity and wisdom, last month, the Marina Beach in the southern Indian city of Chennai was packed with people.

Thirteen kilometers long and 500 meters at its widest, the Marina, which faces the Bay of Bengal, is said to be the second longest natural urban beach in the world.

The waves that late afternoon, shortly after my arrival in the city, were gentle. Women in colorful saris – the ankle-length traditional South Asian clothing – waded up to their knees, mainly to watch over children swimming.

In 2004, a day after Christmas, the bay heaved, and then a powerful wall of water about 10 meters high roared back ashore, smashing against Chennai and other coastal communities of Tamil Nadu state.

The Indian Ocean tsunami, triggered by a magnitude 9.3 earthquake, left over 230,210 confirmed casualties, with about 12,400 in southern India. Chennai, the state capital once known as Madras, lost 60 children. A local official told me that children used to collect seashells from the beach. On that terrible day, he said, people went to the beach to collect the children.

On this year’s Festival of Ganesh, families fashioned mini shrines out of flowers, leaves and icons of the god on the beach.

Teenage boys, a number of them wearing the popular cotton plaid Madras shirt, offered rides on horses on the beach, whose earth yellow sand can be scorching in the afternoon heat.

The trauma may never disappear, but Chennai’s economy has recovered from the devastation of the tsunami. An overhead railway is being built to ease traffic congestion in the city, which could rival the worst traffic jams in Metro Manila.

Residents put together a mini shrine on the Feast of Ganesh, on Marina Beach in Chennai. The beach was hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004.

Chennai is a center of health care and education. Instead of shopping malls, the city is chockfull of hospitals, many specializing in specific afflictions such as cancer and kidney problems. There are numerous centers for traditional Indian or Ayurvedic medicine. “Multi-organ harvesting” is advertised in billboards together with kidney transplants. Universities abound, many of them occupying choice beachfront properties built by the British during colonial times.

I didn’t enter any hospital, but I can imagine patients being treated with warmth and efficient care. Chennai is said to be the most peaceful metropolis in India. The people are naturally friendly and gentle; among foreigners I have met in my travels, they come closest to Filipinos in TLC toward strangers. And everyone speaks English.

There is a strong Catholic presence in the city, where several churches are tourist attractions like the Hindu temples.

There are also numerous monuments. From Fort St. George, originally built by the British and now a government office and museum about the colonial past, I asked the driver who was represented in one monument. His reply: “What? Never mind, we have so many monuments!” He said politicians always leave behind monuments, and now they are all over the city, serving mostly as perches for the numerous bird species that teem especially along the beach. So I have no souvenir picture of any monument.

A man meditates, ignoring tourists at Kapaleeswarar Hindu temple.

More memorable than the monuments is Chennai food. A good way to start the day is with a glass of sweet lime juice – a cross between calamansi and lime – and a cup of South Indian coffee. At the Taj Coromandel Hotel, the amiable barista Suresh-K showed me how the strong, sweet milky coffee brewed with chicory is prepared.

The coffee is brewed in a metal device that looks like the one used for Vietnamese coffee. Fresh ground coffee – the best shops use peaberry – is mixed with chicory and boiling water poured in. A lid is placed while the coffee drips. Boiling milk and a bit of sugar are then added. It is served from a metal tumbler placed on a lipped, deep metal saucer. But before serving, the barista mixes all the ingredients and slightly cools everything by pouring the brew back and forth between the tumbler – called a dabarah – and the saucer.

The best baristas do this in long arcs between the dabarah and saucer, without spilling the coffee. By the time the coffee is served, it is sufficiently aerated and the top all frothy like cappuccino.

You can also get this coffee in the city’s best known vegetarian fastfood chain, Saravana Bhavan. It’s not in a five-star hotel, there is no air conditioning and the toilet is awful. But the place was packed at lunchtime, and there was a wide range of dishes, all at reasonable prices. My days as a carnivore could end if we have these dishes; Indian vegetarian cuisine is one of the most scrumptious and sophisticated in the world.

With the help of a local guide, we ordered masala dosa – those crispy, rolled-up, paper-thin crepe with a small filling of potato curry, popular in Tamil Nadu and certain other parts of South Asia. Making this popular street food is a labor of love. You start by fermenting rice, black lentils and fenugreek seeds overnight, and then mix them with yeast, some water and sugar, and then fermenting it again for a day before frying in a large griddle, with the batter swirled around using the bottom of a metal bowl.

I probably looked famished, because the guide ordered the triple extra size, or whatever that jumbo dosa was called. By the time I finished folding the crepe in three and scarfing down almost everything with the four types of accompanying sambar or dip and coconut chutney, my hands were dripping with ghee – the artery-clogging clarified butter widely used in South Asian cuisine. My shirt was stained and I was an absolute mess, but it was an absolutely delightful meal.

Saravana Bhavan now has 31 branches in India and 38 outlets in 10 other countries. I’m waiting for one to open in Manila.

From the restaurant, we proceeded to Nuts n Spices, a chain of specialty Indian food supplies, where I bought a pack of cardamom pods, Madras curry, and dry mix for making badam milk. Badam is almond; the powdered mix includes cardamom and saffron. Badam milk, sold usually cold in the streets of Chennai, includes almond chunks.

A cup of the cold milk is refreshing on a scorching, humid day. It’s a perfect drink while strolling on Marina Beach, meditating like the devotees at the Hindu temple, contemplating life, death, and recovery from nature’s fury.